it's realizing too late

that your old man was the best thing that ever

 happened to you

The crisis makes you know too well,

it was fear tickled by all of the ugly feathers, 

- A few of your own included that so often,

Rendered you flightless -

that made you miss out

on the exponential madness you thought you'd convinced everyone and yourself

that your fool life was

The bitter swill of decades of

spat wine and - and the sediment that's leftover that you can sift through and never hold
it's sitting and silting

The Crisis slams down your throat 

every iota of every last woman

you ever loved or tried like hell to

including the ones it seemed as if you did

with each year's sliver of wisdom comes crossing out yet another and another  until you're left with two,

maybe three.

Knowing each and every foolish thing you ever said

Every fool thing you did

Whether it cut her or just you,

it always cut you, and now that you're aware and all the numbness is but another memory

it cuts deeper and hurts more,

or it's like the paper cut that is anything but a surface wound

the kind of paper cuts that leave scars, and their rotten magic doesn't end there because written upon them are bad old poems on old, dull lined paper

​

The Crisis 

loans you the lenses to finally see the bubble gummy scar on your ugliest belly

From each- and- every- single- damn- -cut...

Just try drinking me under the table, now that 

The Crisis is the booze.

At first you react in knee jerk fashion

Blaming Crisis

For buying the car you could never afford

for chrisis sake, kid

you're still the sucker born each minute

It's a crying out loud

Crisis

-in stillness while you're Alone with the spirit -

That saves you from falling off the cliff for the 99th time 

your bones still work 

Or perhaps not

your brain

That's a whole other God Damned cryin shame crisis

that arms and pumps your defenseless blood when your heart exists no longer 

No jagged razor blade to cut and protect your scars

it makes you the son, the daughter , again, 

And again and again when it

unveils the thing you had in front of your face

and what's most subject to wince at, at first and at first sight is

That it's still there.

it's still there and the Crisis blooms,

you can keep walking around with your filthy swill in

Spit shined, Purple stained deviled apothecary bottle 

In all its nothing glory

But if you let the Crisis do its work

that fool's flask will shatter

You'll stench of the stink of its contents that spill and wash over you- you always did stink of it,

 because those 

Types of things

Are illusions anyway

Only you saw the flask you strutted. (remember that stupid grin, don't dou?)
That 

Which Supposedly held your self gloried horrid swill

The shattered glass disappears when your eyes have healed,

Because the damn crisis has done its job once you allowed it,

 you can see now , for most intended purposes 

without the Spectacles it loaned you.

And your heart begins to pump again.

The crystals of real glass , scathing the walls of your veins,

Until you let it be Time that takes you.

Analysis...

Crisis's surface is like a mid life crisis but not so clear because the kind of crisis that happens at mid life represents a change that can happen at any point in time. I won't waste the time explaining why what characterizes a 'mid-life' crisis is so applicable at so many points especially when you don't live a very typical domesticated existence.

Mid life is definitely suggested in the text as a hint

On a deeper level Crisis is a Christ figure which is usually capitalized as a reference 

And when it reads 'for Chrisis sake;' it's really obvious, even using the H which is rather too obvious.

But even Christ is just a symbol For revelation 
You letting it be Time that takes you is not trying to control your own death, and life for that matter.
The whole flask and swill and booze thing can be about actual alcoholism but is rather a metaphor for yourself and all the bad shit you've allowed. The apothecary glass is not real it was an illusion for you strutting your own garbage inside a pretty package - all basically due to fear. You realize this and have the choice to keep doing it or allow that ultimate illusion to break... Pretty glass is just a fake container for your shit baggage that I called swill here ... Of course it's hard to let a pretty beautiful looking glass you've held dear to break and ultimately dissipate but it's just an illusion not true beauty.

 The crisis is the booze meaning it's so difficult to swallow it or allow it to work its magic because you have to unarm yourself. Be disarmed ... Hence why The crisis pumps and "arms" your blood, until your heart comes back alive through said revelation 

What is still there is the beautiful things in your life you took for granted...
 

The demon knocks 4 times

(even the wicked can be redeemed)

rap rap rap rap

In fast succession

eyes wide my bed faces the half shut hollow door and I see no one

Next I glance at the arms of my clock and they read 4,19

no matter regarding bewitching -this one is stealthy

No better or worse then when I was a child,

I am just weak at the moment -

my brain is pulsing 231, that's it. Relativism.

Think you'll have your way tonight old fellow?

Stop your lingering

Let the youth and blessed inherit their inheritances and perhaps you will gain redemption Old Scratch

somehow I know,

You haunted the Algonquins,

I pity you,

And though you try and get close 

using pathetic hate...

"Your angels are too strong," I was once lovingly told by a love so great

so I look onto you, in stead, with pity and a thin snarl of love

from distance,

 because I am not your salve nor your victim - both by MY choice

You grow older and I shall get younger and brighter,

until perhaps you free your self from chains so wicked and darker

and just perhaps make amends with me in what will

Eventually 

Be seconds for me. and

Eons for you

and I say "I already forgave you demon,"

Still using that word... Maybe,

because it will take you seconds more 

to earn my trust.

My door to night remains open.

​

​

ai images are terrible:

My Little Me

Never a'gain

will I race to my rescue

Or race to my grave 

As long as that's good enough for you

My sky sweetheart

Blue shining back door skull on a hot spring concrete 

Cermak day

What happened since then is still 

Somehow and sometimes 

A mystery to this day

From Dixie cups

To wrestling rough with you on our carpets

Before we even got to painting our new apartment 

So rare are the stories that end the best

Those where we met again 

I still have to tell that one

If we get to it

I reach out and I hear silence 

Maybe because I saddle in suspect

That

That's exactly what I've got coming

Maybe not cuz you're not there

But it just depends 

On what the hell I'll ever give myself credit for 

I expect to run out of gas

But I get told again and again 

"you're going to get there if you like it, Kiddo"

And I'm waiting, I like it,

I'll run into a flap maybe two, but

I'm waiting at the end of the road for my little me

& your little you

​

This is really happening. And to those that keep my moments away from me, I say to them that these are just my minutes taken away or taken as they are written - as those in a meeting are, menacing and maliced as they may even be- In tasking adjournment to you lord I can, in allegiance I'll stand on but bloody stumps which I cannot ask nor expect any admiration for such and beg of you not to affirm me for such, for such is to know and grow through the cruel things that stand to be the exponent of our ambulanced trauma - as together we are rescued and go through these moments of sacrifice, gratitude and grace, redemption in telepathy, with little expectation of love and its carnage. Almost always expecting less of ourselves but hoping for better.... and we are merely scratching the surface of the raceway...,

And until such a day comes that our adjournment is balanced and equal, speak now because I've grown tired of capturing our everyday moments and minding the scale that I no longer mind the unsteadiness of,

there is by far no resolute or resolve to even speak of or imagine, As your higher ground is your neighbors and neighborhoods - from a distance, the lower of the two, with our backs to one another and the pedestalate shock that the scale's chains burn us- lines like "he's never going to change" enter and exit in me as simply as vines, 

The vines that glory our galaxies and eventually empty our galleries, shaded and galaxied. Every so often I can grant you this to be true- Compassion and disdain for the world that took her from me, and took my family , always to end up taking care of yourself, with Epicuristic discipline, when you arrive home to a cold bed and the hedonistic heathen that travels with the man who still reaches his hands out to you, compelled by nothing, beckoned by All, but the pasteure of dying and birthing, All but the stocking amiss of flesh and sublime bliss,

Robbed by our tendencies that draw us near the favor of our bruises, and the pleasant fever we felt when we applied pressure to them and the companionship of the fellow bruised.    

And through this dawned the flesh-ed bruised canisters and their fellowship, and no this is not a series of whys and what's or words strung at random but a carefully coded wakeup call... Wake to the fruitfulness of your real investments and the glass half full.

Know now, know now what's been Keeping us fair at losing and what for us was once a thrilling chase and ritual that seemed to result in magnificent rewards we long for now - have been anything but forgotten, but could not imagine their own weight and potential inertia at the time.

And though some of us may never see one another again and be so tired, so joked and replaced;, a replacement for ambiguity because it's what fit iñ the medium of our breakfast plates at the time, filled with cotton to separate your teeth and their hospitals and clinics for those who had the money to care or not, to not give or to give.

Time is waiting. Time is around the corner.

epi...  and for that reason I will still maintain a wattage of indignance, à bent needle that bobs and weaves within a certain margin on the meter but a relative needle that points to a measured calculation nonetheless, while we collectively hijack and recalibrate the machine on which that meter displays our urgencies, synergies and just how close our hearts are to each other and more importantly a non- matrixed glorious understood completion -

Flooded Wallets of faith chalantly fill the floors, stain the carpets of the wreckless and seep through the basement concrete seams that we use as foundations when we should be using ships as homes, so that we can dock on ground and embark upon the sea and leave the static, defiled statehoods behind - Not running but Sailing - SAILING, mother, Sailing.

Where birds soar and do us the altruism of sending our carefully penned letters though we are not worthy, yet yes we are, because we have relearned their importance now out at sea... What else could possibly compel the carrier pigeons?

And I will stay here and go there,,, continuously staking flags in the waves.

​​

author's note:

I wrote a pt. 2 or rather a finish to "The Heathon" (intentional misspelling of heathen) I had posted before but got little response but I personally liked it enuf that I added pt 2 to the comments then edited a bit. It's lengthy, some parts aren't strong, & it reads better out loud with the intended inflection. But screw it, here it is again for anyone who might have enough time, care and attention span and doesn't despise poetry as much as I do:
 

​

I could swear that rotten buzzard went truly Cuckoo 

when he clucked thirteen times 

more of a cruel joke than unlucky 

Or a nod at my insanity 

Was it midnight or one a.m.?

Hell,

It doesn't matter 

It could have been 3 in the afternoon for all I know or

care

But that rotten buzzard clucked thirteen times 

At me.

There's no one here but him and me these days 

And he's saner than me, you understand? So he

certainly wouldn't have clucked 

Thirteen times at himself.

He's saner than me you see

And now that he's sharper

He damn knows how to wind me up

And does he appreciate the care I've always taken 

When I've restarted his pendulum 

And steadily reset his Time 

And slowly raised his weights

That turn the gears that give him life?

Maybe...

But I think that buzzard has come to take it for granted 

as they say

Now that he knows 

That he's saner than me

That rotten buzzard

Isn't so rotten

That old German foul

Has just gotten to be

An old German foul mouth like me

The real truth is,

I've always lost count after five.

 

Authors note:

It's not as genius as you give me credit for. Just a mildly clever quip about the imaginary relationship between an insane version of myself and a Cuckoo Clock that I anthropomorphize (i.e. personify / describe as if it is human or alive)
the poem suggests that in the writer's version of reality, it does hit 13 in order to mock his sanity. He believes that the inanimate Cuckoo bird (often synonymous with the idea of insanity) has become "saner" than he is.
There's a lot more than that going on in this poem, such as the idea of sanity being a curvature, temporal and relative thing, increasing, decreasing, exceeding what is thought as "possible" and also completely jumping about in non- temporal disorder. Temporal being time. One theory behind the etymology of 13 being unlucky is because an analog clock does not exceed 12. And time as we measure it anyway, though it is according to the movement of the planet, is man made, and the clock is a contraption, and it takes on human character, especially a Cuckoo clock. But it's also up to the reader what they decide to take from it. One might even say that by the last line, it jests the entire thing as a form of madness

the crazy thing about writing poetry is that I didn't intend to imply all of the things I just described when I wrote it. But after writing it... I realize, OMG, that's what I meant! It's the subconscious at work, as well as the Spirit flowing through that graces me with the imagination, creativity and even involuntary clarity and ideas that spark into the poem. It's as though I'm not even writing them - but the reality is that I am, but with the spirit as a companion - as it moves.

The Carp's speed of Light (the cage of the carp)

  Bottom feeder filthy angel of the sea the carp the  passage of time is like the mud in its veins 

passing 

but only it is relative to the much slower pain of leaving the warm shaded womb 

Into the sterile deafening light of existing outside of it ... this., the mud moves by... like the speed of lightning

As 

we trudge through the muddy veins of our losses

And attempts to reconcile 

make penance unselfish contrition 

hope for redemption 

We are specks in the muddy carp veins

repeating the process after of course 

after we pass through the heart lacing back through the mud filled veined past that is once again the present.

We are not ugly

We defy this metaphor only in our beauty

Our souls tested in the cage of the carp

​

This Train is Bound to Jest (a shot at redemption)

Is this train bound to glory like this train has always been whispered to? Whispers can be lies and glory can be a varied term... 

Doing readings for drunk college students that don't understand 

isn't glory... 

The New Yorker isn't glory... 

The Newberry was bragging rights but not glory...

Cafes are boring,

Publishers are scamists 

I've touched it all with a weak finger nail and none of it I care to chase,

I want my darling back instead 

Of shouting sad

Shouting bad

For crying out loud

For auld lang syne

I promise bluntness, more

 to myself 

Thaen my audience 

But also, I promise to them, because without them I'm no less or more than a lunatic 

From here on, writing lunacy desperately...

Be good to me

Be good to me early

Be good to me late.

rape , my friend,

So I can remember how it felt

I can remember how it went 

And realize

The difference between how I felt

And how I was told I felt

Take it away again - you seem to have no qualms

Take it away again with nervous, shaking, sweaty palm

Or steady ease.

Knowing the pain you inflict

Relatively anyway

Keep track of the stars you've deemed dead

My friend my friend 

My dirty little friend 

I made you

You made you

That makes us both entirely impossibly undead.

this treastie has taken a turn

I'm bound for glory 

I suppose,

I suppose 

I can wait 

To be bound for dead

And moreso 

I'll give a shot at remembering redemption 

And the joys I've felt.

Here and the Now. 

plod along with Little Laurie's

Little teddies too!

Teddies you yes you call Tedbo

And buzz dreams you 

Could and had

Done

Without...

I only post now

I save nuthin'

but telling you that is not a cry curse... Hoping you

Will document

Any thing at all

Quite to the contrary. 

If it lasts... To have to be reread by others

It was not worthy among so many other truths

That will say the same thing... Or inspire it.One, To another 

One to another 

I'll show the metered what just what 

They did mean, they did do

The stacked annoyances

The repeated disturbances

They meant something very real

In your plaintive world 

You just had no idea, no clue

As admirable as say I found you...

awe, Gee,

You're better off, ya know? Yeah, yeah sure. I'm, sure yeah

Ya know

I'm better off, you know ??

What one self

Can do to it's other

Huff, Huff...

What one self can do to it's other.

My God.

Nono... 

Ya know.

You know what oneself will do to the other.
 

​17th year

​

She radiated,
An amberish glow and a spark, a spark inside and outside of herself
That put Freemont Street to absolute shame and disgrace
Even when she attic’ed into the bowels of her melancholy and misery
That which was very real and haunting towards the end of our time together
Her energies of ‘spirit’ did not fade but merely were [clouded] by the mishappen clouds of a dishonest (depression)
That at times would misguide the both of us,
But never diminished the grace of her humility and gratitude that exceeded all of whom I have ever known

Though the <sudden] way in which she lept from this world will always, on this plane, be the most tragic and deeply saddening, tormented heartache that I can ever in my days imagine
I would not trade my shortened, brief and beloved seventeen years beside her for the universe’s greatest salve
Wrenching and twisting and falling in my malice for myself every single night since then, their still blooms an even greater love and (admiration) adoration 
My most beautiful and misleading(ly) [hopeful gift of a day w/her]  but not misgiven day with her, a misleading(ingly) hopeful gift, that was followed by the most terrible and terrifying day of my life
In that bleakness, that utter despair and depravity that I was totally forsaken I shouted to the sky words that I can’t write because they would be mistaken misunderstood by all
Is forever {etched in the fibers of my soul}   - not just its memory but its lasting effects – it has no regarding justifiable metaphor or even description or adject 
So I instead offer to her my utter failure of an expression of my undying unfading love every single moment I shall live to her

\ deep CUT  next

Jamie Michael Albert
 
The 4th day is Worth the Other 3 

The, only thing I ever tried to do was heal you

Oh please so I was your charity ?

You know that's not what I meant 

Yeah, and like you healed me...

Jesus! Stop, this isn't you

Let me guess now Im hurting you

well, yes you areGod can't you just be strong, your forcing   

   me to stay is a   

   weakness, not some noble thing you romanticize it  

   to be

That last line in part is 

what I sometimes wish she would have said. 

She didn't, 

she still loved me

None of it really went like that in fact

Though she did attempt to wound me

only so I would let her go

So it would make it easier 

To let me go -

we were both weak

It was real and that was scary 

But she also was trying to bargain for something less 

      exciting 

      but safer

Of medium comfort

Mediocre semi mediocre predictable romance

Is not romance it's

barely Even

Love

I'm not talking about passion grown tired

But suffering 3 days only so on the 4th

you can be licking your chops, all day long... After

You bathed with an even better 'love'

Than you had 

8 days ago.

I had the key and  allure

to bring a few darlings to this,

I'm tired, though, 

And fatigue gets you thinking -

Because fatigue takes time and leaves you with only your thoughts -

And you realize 

i've only got a sweeter thing on the other side and

I (left my coat in the cab damnit...!)

for a good reason -1

and you need not take

Your sweet life

To rise away from it forever 

I get my coat back,

You get 

Your coat back - your ring, earing.. whatever

And I get to be with her

all 7 days - all -

No, no days no numbers no time I'm with her constitutely

sweet lord thank you for the choice.

 

alex

a young urban explorer took a liking to me

Many years ago

quite the brave cad, It was

obvious 

That he enjoyed showing me

enclaves and the entombed hideaways among the urban decay

that he sought and discovered; 

the ruins of abandoned churches and such -

and devised entrances 

That required careful maneuvering and discretion.

third story squats and literal underground pass ways

and tarred rooftops we would scale and careen with virtually completely unseen magnificent views of the Chicago landscape 

he must've felt my spirit of adventure, when 

He took on the role of the older tramp

and taught me how to hop a moving freight 

He knew their schedules and routes well

and how best to watch 

For the yard bulls

and incoming or outgoing trains that could potentially

Squash, and

 be a bo's Untimely end.

Short and thin - he made an excellent mentor 

when it came to traversing the corridors of most anywhere 

And also had a knack for finding the somehow hidden, mysteriously wide open spaces

Amidst the congested and deliberate clogged bowels of our cosmopolis

without the aid of maps or tech still yet to be born 

Our time together may have been 

The very end of the tail of hobohemia, the frayed and grayed hairs of which was

for the most part

already considered by many to be deceased.

I was a busker, and 

transitioned, with some overlap,

on to passenger trains

counterfeit bus passes

an occasional trip over the sea

And thumbing my way across the south the east and west

Never to see him again.

I've returned to scarfing meals off of the same plates I did as a child,

Preserved somehow over time,

back home to a quieter, familiar existence.

Despite some inherent chaos and discord, however 

Those days of protest and what many

Might consider dangerous travel - be it within our

Own city or across the prairies plains mountains, valleys forests and towns

There was much silence, kindness,

Ànd hope of the present,

That existed very much on its own

And still does 

In fluid tandem

With what is Now.